This Judgment Of God Was Not A Mistake - God Centered Bible Study

Hello and welcome back to God -Centered Theology. This is Andy Cain, and we are back in God -Centered

Bible Study, and we are, after some time away, we're picking back up in Lamentations.

And last time we finished Lamentations chapter 2, verses 3 through 5.

Today we are going to be looking at verses 6 through 10. And what I want you to see here today, we've been talking about the unmistakable judgment of God.

We looked at how the strength and protection were moved in verse 3 through 5, and how before that, in the beginning of the chapter, it's unmistakable judgment.

Well, it's not just that it's unmistakable in the sense of knowing who it came from. Today, in verses 6 through 10, what we're going to see is that the judgment of God is not a mistake.

So many times we probably think or, you know, we've heard, you know, said, you know, something like, this must be a mistake.

It must be a mistake. Surely, you know, God's not paying attention, or, you know,

He's made a mistake or messed up somehow, or, you know, if you ever had the wrong package get delivered, or a package that was meant for you gets delivered to someone else, or you get somebody else's mail, we recognize that level of mistake, and we recognize, you know, this wasn't, you know, necessarily anything intentional, and, you know, we even try to take

God off the hook. We're like, no, surely God knows this is a mistake, and surely

He didn't mean to do this. Well, no. The judgment of God is not a mistake.

It is meant to come. It is meant to be exactly where it is.

So let's start, and let's take a look here in verse 6. It says, He, and remember, all throughout this chapter, you see this repeated over and over.

How the Lord, verse 1, brings the judgment. The Lord is swallowed up. His wrath. So we know very clearly that all these pronouns are in reference to the

Lord. So it says, He, God, has violently treated

His tabernacle like a garden booth. So something that should be a holy place with holy activity going on has been violently treated as if it's just a common booth, a common thing.

It's, you know, no different than any other garden booth out there, and that's how it's been treated.

He says, you know, you have mistreated it, disrespected it. Okay. That's how

I'm going to treat it. It says, He has brought His appointed meeting place to ruin.

Now, this wasn't a mistake. All these things that are happening to the

Israelites here, and being carried off into Babylon, it's not a mistake. It's not something that God is saying, oh man,

I missed that one there. Oh buddy, I probably should have been paying better attention.

No, this is exactly what was supposed to happen. Notice with me here in Jeremiah chapter 52, and remember the book of Jeremiah, this is

Jeremiah prophesying all these things, and the people hated it for it. Like, ah, come on,

Jeremiah. You've lost your mind, man. Come on. Peace and safety, everything's fine. Jeremiah's like, no, your sin's going to come on your head.

And here you notice in Jeremiah 52 verse 13, it says, And he burned the house of Yahweh, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every large house he burned with fire.

So all the military force of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, tore down all the walls around Jerusalem.

Then Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, took away into exile some of the poorest people, the rest of the people who remained in the city, the defectors who had defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the artisans.

And it goes on here in the last chapter to describe what's happening. So this burning, this destruction of the temple, and the walls, and the city, and the people.

God wasn't asleep at the wheel. This is what judgment looks like. See, God is glorified in maximizing...He

maximizes His glory in demonstrating all of His attributes, His love, His grace, His mercy. Yes, this is true, but also in His justice, and His righteousness, and His holy judgments, and bringing wrath on sin as well.

So when He brings wrath against sin, when He brings judgment against your sin, or against my sin, and of course ultimately our judgment for our sin is paid for on the cross by Jesus Himself, but there was still real judgment against our sin, real judgment that had to be paid for.

This isn't something that can just be skirted by or let go. It had to be dealt with. And for those of us that are saved, obviously our wrath is paid for, judgment's paid for, we stand righteous before God, but in time here there's still consequences for sin.

There's still things that happen as a result of sin. And here they were told, judgment's coming,

Babylon's coming. The just results of your sin will come upon your head.

And so we see this. He prophesied that it's going to burn, it's going to be torn down, and here we are.

And so He says here, we've brought the appointed meeting place, or the booth to ruin.

Yahweh has caused to be forgotten the appointed time in Sabbath and Zion, and He has spurned king and priests in the indignation of His anger.

So what you see here is righteous anger, a righteous justified anger against sin, because God is the eternal being.

He's the eternal God. He is the creator. He is the one has every right to be angry when

His creation doesn't act in accordance to His will. And so He has this burning anger, and He has spurned the city and the temple, the walls, king and priest, and this was prophesied as well.

The so -called priests that were claiming to speak for God really weren't. All this stuff was dealt with.

It says here in verse 7, the Lord has rejected His altar. He has abandoned His sanctuary.

He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces. They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh as in the day of an appointed time.

So think about what's being said here. They're making noise in the house of Yahweh as in the day of an appointed time.

I think there was a lot of mocking going on here. I think a lot of these people from Babylon that were coming in as they were destroying the city and the wall and the temples and killing people,

I have no doubt they were probably mocking and doing ceremonial things and gestures and saying things and making noise in the temple, you know, mocking the

Jews and saying, hey, look at us. Look, you think you're supposed to have the tabernacle of God, the altar of God, and they'll look at you and just making fun of them.

It says your Lord rejects His altar. He says, look, I mean you think about going all the way back to Cain and Abel.

What was the thing with Cain and Abel? He told them this is what I expect. Cain doesn't bring it. It gets rejected because it wasn't what he said.

That's why it's very important to remember it matters not what man thinks but what God has said. In this instance too, you haven't been doing the sacrifices, haven't been doing them by faith and doing them correctly, haven't been living right, and so he's rejected the altar.

I don't want anything from that altar. Don't sacrifice anything to me on that altar. I've rejected it.

I'm abandoning this sanctuary. He's washed his hands of it, so I'm done with it.

I'm done with this temple. I'm done with these walls. I'm done with these people. I'm done.

Notice it says it's delivered into the hand of the enemy, the walls of her palaces. These walls were meant to be fortified protection.

Walls were very, very important in these times. Walls were immensely important when it came to defending your city and defending your people, and so for the walls of a city, especially a large one, to be delivered into the hand of an enemy, this means you're done for.

I mean once they get past your walls, you're done for. Not only have they gotten past the walls, they've destroyed them, and notice once again this unmistakable judgment of God.

This is not a mistake. This is not something that just happened, and like three days later God finds out about it. He's like, oh,

I didn't see that coming. No, it says He, God the Lord, has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces.

God purposefully, intentionally, by design, and we're going to see this in verse 8 in a minute, and because of a determined plan, gave and delivered over these walls, this protection, and this city to Babylon.

It's no mistake here. Notice verse 8, Yahweh, the

Lord, determined, thought to bring the ruin. It's planned.

It's not a mistake. This is, oh, this has befallen us. Oh, you know,

I'm a prosperity preacher. If something bad happens to you, it weren't by God, because you know

God only wants to bring you health, and wealth, and increase. Well, no, no, no.

Yahweh brought this ruin. He determined it. He planned it, and it happened exactly as He wanted it to happen.

None of this is a surprise. None of this is outside of His control. None of this is outside of His sovereignty.

This is all the Lord. The wall of Babylon, the daughter of Zion, has been brought to ruin.

He, God, notice this. There's not a mistake here in this book. Specifically, and we saw this in chapter 1, but specifically in chapter 2, when we're looking at the judgment in some great detail here, the repetition of the pronoun, and also you'll see like, for instance, in verse 5, it said the

Lord has become like an enemy. You move down. Verse 6, Yahweh's caused it to be forgotten.

Verse 7, the Lord has rejected His altar. So the author here, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, every couple of lines, every couple of verses will say the

Lord, or Yahweh, just to remind the reader that this He, this One who's bringing this judgment, is

God Himself, and when you see the pronoun Her, it's the pronouns being used to describe

Jerusalem. We saw this a lot in verse, in chapter 1, if you'll remember, and if you go back to our study when we started

Lamentations, in chapter 1, we saw a lot about, for example, in verse 4, Her gates are desolate.

Her priests are sighing. Her virgins are grieving. She herself is bitter.

Her adversaries have become the masters. Her enemies have become complacent. So you really see in chapter 1, the judgment and the lamenting coming from the point of view of the people, primarily.

Chapter 2, we're seeing the judgment and the wrath that came in the form of Babylon, primarily from God's perspective, or at least the writer here describing what

God did, as opposed to how the people saw it. So, you know, He says, God did this.

God delivers this. God rejects this, so on and so forth. So it says here, Yahweh determined this.

God is sovereign. The wall of the daughter of Zion's been ruined. He stretches out the line.

He has not turned back His hand from swallowing up. The Lord's bringing His mighty hand of judgment down, and many times

He can relent. We see this throughout the Old Testament, where He relents His judgment. He turns it back.

It doesn't mean that God changed His mind, but it's a way of Him communicating to us, those of us who live in time and have finite, we're finite creatures with finite brains, souls, in a way we can understand it, that it's like God bringing out judgment, but then relenting and pulling back.

And so, in this case, He's not turned back His hand. He's not stopped swallowing up.

He has caused rampart and wall to mourn. Notice the sort of personification here, taking something inanimate like a wall and describing it as mourning.

They have languished together. So, the people and the city and the walls, all of it, they languish together.

Unmistakable here. Notice verse 9, now we get the shift here from something

Yahweh is doing, the Lord is doing, to an effect of what has happened. Her gates have sunken to the ground.

He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations.

The law is no more. Also, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.

Well, well, well. My, how things have changed.

The prophets have found no vision from Yahweh. Isn't that interesting?

Because all in Jeremiah, we read some of the cross -references when we look at chapter 1.

We see God saying, these priests are saying, those people are saying, they're claiming to have a vision from me, but they do not speak for me.

Nope. And Jeremiah'd say, they're not speaking for Him. They're not speaking for God.

And it says, the prophets find no vision from Yahweh. Isn't that interesting?

Think about modern day people that claim to be prophets. And just so you know, there are no prophets living today.

So whether it's in a Pentecostal church or wherever you find it, wherever you find it, claiming, well,

I'm a prophet. I've got revelation from the Lord. I'm going to tell you, just say it to the Lord.

Oh, the Lord told me and all this nonsense. No, they're not. And it's funny how they always want to say, oh,

I just, I know the Lord. It's kind of like the fake psychics, right? Like the movie scanners, like, you know, all this, just nonsense.

Okay. All these visions, all these prophetic words, I want to have a word for the

Lord for you and all this stuff. It's funny how when their words don't work out and the things that they claim doesn't quite go the way they said.

Woo. APP bathroom. Can't find them, can you? They're gone. Oh, and it's funny when, you know, especially when you combine this with this health and wealth stuff, that's like a, you know,

God wants to heal everybody. God wants everybody to be rich when things are going really bad. Well, where'd he at?

Can't find him nowhere. Can you? Same thing here. All those prophets, peace and safety.

Jeremiah has lost his mind. Come on. We're doing great. Everything's fine.

Look at us. We've got our walls. We've got our altar. We've got our temple. We've got animal sacrifices.

We've got health, wealth, whatever it is. All these visions.

We've got a word from the Lord. And now Babylon's come and everything's destroyed.

Completely the opposite from what they claimed when they were mocking Jeremiah. They're nowhere to be found.

Where did they go? Where did they go, George? Where did they go? Can't find them, can you?

Oh, isn't that convenient? The prophets, of course we do mean prophets, suddenly have no vision from the

Lord. Hmm. I wonder what changed. Lord have mercy.

Bless the children. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground. They are silent.

Hmm. We saw some warnings against the elders in the book of Jeremiah, didn't we? It is nothing more sad, especially in a modern context, in the modern church.

Eldership, which desperately needs to be restored in our day and time. But when you're supposed to have good eldership leading you and they don't, they fall into sin.

They embezzle money, sexual sin, they're tyrannical, whatever it is.

You need good leaders and good eldership, good qualified male leadership of the church.

And they're the ones who are supposed to be saying, thus saith the Lord is what the Lord has said. And it's sad when you see it happen.

That's why that falls. That's what's going on here. These elders who were supposed to have been the leaders, teaching them what

God has said and being an example, were not that. And now these boisterous, look at me,

I'm an elder. I'm going to tell you what to be and all this nonsense. I'm so great. Look at me. Look at them now, sitting on the ground, silent.

Got anything to say now, Mr. Elder? Y 'all just run your mouths and talk all the time for.

Got anything to say now? You're awfully quiet over there on the ground. You know, and this just irks me.

Nothing makes me more angry than this someone claiming to speak for God and the words coming out of their mouth aren't even in the same universe as what is actually written in Scripture.

Dr. James White has a book about the criminal mishandling of the Word of God. He talks about how just the criminal mishandling of the

Word of God in pulpits, that's where it's got to start. It's got to be done right there first. But my goodness, these elders, silent.

They have thrown dust upon their heads. They have girded themselves with sackcloth, you know, sackcloth and ashes, right?

Remember in Jonah? He goes and preaches the repentance of the revival happens. They cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes.

It's the way these people demonstrated mourning over sin and repentance and things like that.

This is what they're doing. And the virgins of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. This is complete devastation, complete destruction.

There's nowhere else to slice it. That's what it is. But it's not a mistake.

It's not a mistake that these false prophets suddenly have no vision from God. No vision.

It's no mistake that these elders are very silent. It's no mistake that this altar has been rejected by the

Lord. Is it His altar? Yeah. But He expects it to be used correctly based on what

He has said. That's why these churches that are dying don't understand. They're like, what's happened? We just don't understand.

Like it's you. God's rejected your church. These dying churches when they get really down low to like the last few before closing is usually the ones that just will not give up that control.

And you see it. They just won't give it up. That's not how God wants His church. He usually wants you to engage in His church the way

He's commanded you to. And if you don't, He's going to take that blessing off of you. He's not going to bless disobedience.

He's just not going to do it. He's abandoned this altar since you have used it incorrectly, sinfully, complete lack of reverence for me.

You can burn every animal you've got on this altar. It means nothing. This is no mistake.

This is exactly what God wanted to happen because of the sin of the people and because God's name is true.

And if He says it, He must bring it to pass because He is consistent with what He says. And if He tells you, if you sit against me,

I'm going to bring judgment, He means it. So once again, not the happiest book in the

Bible. I would admit it's not sunshine and rainbows and happiness.

But my friends, just like those that say, well, you know, God is love and He's all love and that's all

He is. No. God has revealed Himself to be holiness and justice and grace and mercy and love.

He's all those things. But because He's all those things, all those things have to be demonstrated in the world.

And we see it demonstrated here. There's not a lack of love here, but His love cannot be at the exception of His wrath and judgment when sin occurs or else

He seems to be God. Now, as I've been telling you, we move through this book, you're going to start to see that turn towards hope and things like that.

And we'll get there. But for right now, we're down in the barrel right now. We're down in the gutter. It's a lot of negativity.

It's a lot of sadness, a lot of judgment, and it's not a mistake. Amen. Well, thank you for joining me on this

God -centered Bible study as we look through the book of Lamentations. I hope you're learning. I hope you're enjoying this.

And I hope it is impacting your walk with Christ. Amen. Well, God bless you. See you again very soon.